Eye-Fi Expands Product Line and Features

Eye-Fi has added a new high-end Wi-Fi card for digital cameras, updated its software, and added an auto-delete option: I've been a fan of the Eye-Fi, a Secure Digital (SD) format memory card with Wi-Fi embedded since its release. But I've always had some nits to pick about how it works. Over time, Eye-Fi has addressed most of these.

The last appear to be resolved in the release of new software, and a new high-end card, the Pro X2. The software is available today, and pre-orders for the Pro X2 are being taken online now.

The Pro X2 (list $150) shifts its Wi-Fi to 802.11n, almost certainly the single-stream variety, which improves range and speed separately and together. The card includes 8 GB of storage, and is rated Class 6 for its read/write speed. This is a leap from 4 GB with its Pro card (see a comparison of all Eye-Fi cards).

Call it the law of unintended consequences, but the good kind. Or the rule of 1+1=3. That's what you get when you combine Wi-Fi with digital photography.

With the Eye-Fi Secure Digital (SD) fomat memory card, a Wi-Fi card that snaps into many popular digital cameras, photographers get something truly new—"Endless Memory".

Sure, we've graduated from the old days where each shot had to be budgeted against a limited roll of camera film-- 24 or 36 frames. Now we have plentiful memory on our digital cameras, and concerns about running out of space are almost a thing of the past. That is, except when you forget to clear old pictures off of a memory card and you suddenly find yourself almost out of storage for new pictures or videos. When that happens (and it seems to happen to me at the moments when I really want to capture that special event), it's back to the bad old days. What should I delete? How many shots should I take so that I don't run out of memory?

Enter Wi-Fi, and an innovative application by Eye-Fi. With "Endless Memory" the SD memory card uploads pictures to the Internet cloud when you're in range of a hotspot. Then it automatically deletes the old pictures from the camera's storage so that you always have room for new pictures. As Glenn Fleishman points out: "For a photographer with a hotspot subscription or a laptop nearby for uploads, you could shoot, well, endlessly."

Who would have guessed that Wi-Fi could have such a nice impact on photography? Certainly the creative folks at Eye-Fi did, but for the rest of us it's another example of the unexpected ways ubiquitous broadband changes our lives and behavior. For the better.

More about Eye-Fi, here.

Maybe we should chalk it up to the upcoming season of jolly, but lately it seems like everyone wants to give away free Wi-Fi access to travelers. Well, free as long as you watch an ad or a promo for whichever company is sponsoring it, such as Yahoo, Microsoft and now Google. But while we might roll our eyes at what looks like just another way to serve up ads, the idea of free WiFi-based marketing is actually pretty smart. Among the current offers:

• Starting today, visitors to Times Square in New York City will be able to get free Wi-Fi on their computers and mobile phones, courtesy of Yahoo. If you log in from your mobile phone, it is going to take you to http://m.yahoo.com. On a computer, you end up at a Yahoo page filled with ads.
• Google is offering free Wi-Fi access on Virgin America through Jan 15, 2010.
• eBay is sponsoring free Wi-Fi on 250 flights on Delta Airlines during the week of Thanksgiving. Wi-Fi users will get access to the eBay home page and an invitation to shop there.
• Microsoft is working with JiWire to give away free Wi-Fi in premium hotspots in hotels and airports as long as they use Bing for search via their connection.
• Google is giving away free Wi-Fi in 47 airports across the U.S., including hubs such as Miami, Seattle, Houston and San Jose, Calif. The promotions will last through Jan. 15, 2010.

Google, from the looks of it, is using Boingo Wireless’ network. The Los Angeles-based hotspot operator today announced a new sponsored access program that will allow brand advertisers to engage with Wi-Fi users.

Wi-Fi usage has been on the upswing recently, thanks to the rise of smartphones, especially the iPhone. Whether it is airports or cafes, people are increasingly logging onto Wi-Fi networks. “People are creatures of habit and one of the goals of this campaign is to open people up to new ways of finding what they are looking for on the Internet,” said Jeff Bernstein, senior vice president at UM (the agency formerly known as Universal McCann). “JiWire’s media channel serves our goal because it gives people an incentive to try Bing and let the engine speak for itself.”

Given that many of the estimated 100 million travelers who will spend time in airports with Google-sponsored Wi-Fi will at some point in time encounter Google ads, the decision is more than a nice gesture. Google providing access to free Wi-Fi is kind of like publishing those free magazines littering coffeehouses. It’s all about the ad revenue.

A typical free Wi-Fi campaign from Boingo offers travelers 15-20 minutes of complimentary Internet access in exchange for watching a 30-second video, by which the user is engaged directly with the brand. Other opportunities to engage consumers include lead generation, product and service trials, social media applications, location-based searches, customer surveys and downloadable content, Boingo noted in a press release.

Giving users something in return for their attention is a smart way to engage with an audience, which increasingly glosses over display advertising. It’s a welcome development, one that strikes a better balance between the needs of a marketeer and the end user (and potential customer).

It’s also a recognition of how important Wi-Fi is in the quest for constant connectivity, especially as more and more folks tote around WiFi-enabled smartphones. With 70 minutes spent behind the security gates at airports on average, everyone from business travelers to harried parents looking for a kid-friendly diversion can now find something online. That’s all good, but one can imagine it’s going to get a lot harder to find an empty power outlet this season.

Photo courtesy of Yahoo

Just a few years ago the conventional wisdom was that 3G (or WiMAX) would "kill" Wi-Fi. But in fact, just the opposite has happened and Wi-Fi hotspots (especially the free ones described in this article) are popping up everywhere. Their biggest backers: mobile carriers with 3G networks. That may seem like a bit ironic, but it makes good sense: Wi-Fi enables the carriers to offload broadband-hungry customers to a cheaper (and faster) alternative infrastructure. With 3G and Wi-Fi it's not either/or but both/and.

The move toward free Wi-Fi, increasingly seen as a form of customer engagement, will only accelerate the growth of hotspots. Wi-Fi is a way to touch customers directly, and free Wi-Fi hotspots represent an exchange of value where both parties win. I give your brand some attention; you give me broadband.

The examples provided in the article illustrate the importance major online advertisers and resellers place on this value exchange. May a thousand-- make that a few million-- Wi-Fi hotspots bloom!

Earlier this month, when I visited Paris for the Le Web 2009, the most important thing I “packed” for the trip didn’t weigh an ounce: an account with Wi-Fi hotspot aggregation service, Boingo. It alone allowed me to stay connected, avoid expensive hotel Wi-Fi access fees and most importantly, not feel out of touch from the people I care about. I used my iPod touch (which is really an iPhone without a live cellphone connection) to make Skype calls via Wi-Fi, check email and whatever else.

In fact the only time I used my MacBook Pro was to download photos from the camera or craft blog posts. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. Such behavior — forgoing the laptop in favor of a WiFi-enabled device such as a smartphone — is becoming increasingly commonplace.

Thanks to the growing popularity of such devices, including phones and cameras, Wi-Fi hotspots are becoming increasingly useful. We’ve closely tracked the rise of Wi-Fi taking place thanks to smartphones, and today there’s new data out which shows that Wi-Fi usage while on the go continues to get traction.

“The ubiquity of Wi-Fi has created hotspot coverage as an expected amenity at many places of business,” says Frank Dickson, In-Stat analyst. “While consumer or leisure users do not often carry a laptop, they do have Wi-Fi enabled handhelds and are using these devices to access hotspots. This, coupled with the service being bundled with mobile plans, is making hotspot access much more consumer-oriented compared to the service’s former business focus.”

Handhelds accounted for 35 percent of all hotspot connections in 2009, up from 20 percent in 2008, and are forecast to account for fully half of them by 2011, according to market research firm, In-Stat,. The research firm estimates that the hotspot usage on the whole will increase 47 percent in 2009, bringing the total number of connections to 1.2 billion. A report by JiWire estimates that during the first half of 2009, the number of Wi-Fi hotspots around the world grew by 9 percent.

According to In-Stat research, WiFi-enabled devices such as game players, personal media players and cameras are going to see a sharp increase between 2009 and 2013, rising from 108.8 million to 177.3 million.

There is a predominance of mobile carriers in the hotspot market, resulting in promotion of Wi-Fi enabled handset devices on their networks. New dual-mode Wi-Fi phones are coming to the market. Growth in applications, such as content download, or even more so VoFi, will drive usage of handheld devices over the coming years. Finally, markets, such as China, are opening for hotspots that have previously restricted Wi-Fi usage on handhelds.

I wonder when we’ll see similar trends unfold in the U.S. I, for one, am happy to leave my laptop at home.

Om Malik's profile of the Wi-Fi hotspot market yields some interesting numbers:

▪ Handhelds accounted for 35% of hotspot connections in 2009, up from 20% in 2008-- a 75% relative increase
▪ Hotspot usage increased 49% in 2009
▪ 1.2 billion hotspot connections were made in 2009
▪ Wi-Fi enabled gadgets-- game players, personal media players, cameras-- will grow by 63% in the four years from 2009-2013

Om also notes that mobile carriers will be huge players in the hotspot market. AT&T's actions over the past year and Verizon's more recent moves show that it makes great business sense for mobile carriers to offload bandwidth-hungry applications from their expensive 3G infrastructure onto cheaper Wi-Fi networks.

However, if you look at the total numbers of public hotspots, I would guess that the combined share of all the carriers is still just a fragment of the whole market. There are so many small and regional players, and more are bringing up new networks every day.

Looks like 2010 is going to be a great year for Wi-Fi!